


The Piast Predicament

by Tierfal



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-30
Updated: 2010-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-09 05:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not entirely clear to Merlin which is a greater threat to his sanity, the monster or the prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Piast Predicament

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladybracknell](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ladybracknell).



> So one website on the entire internet will tell you a piast is a giant Irish snake monster. The rest of the internet will tell you it's a Polish dynasty of some kind. I think we all know who's right.

They had been tracking the piast for two full days, which Merlin thought was strenuous even for them. On the upside, they had chased the thing two days' journey away from Camelot; but on the downside, Merlin wanted to curl up under a shrub and die peacefully, or at least never to look for giant snake slither-tracks ever again.

Blessedly, as the sun had gone down, Arthur had called a halt, and they'd made camp, marking the last slither-track before they lost the light. Not-so-blessedly, Arthur was back on his feet not long after dinner, planting his hands on his hips and giving Merlin an expectant look.

Merlin blinked back at him, attempting to be as blank and unresponsive as humanly possible. Once, when Arthur had endured a very long day of policy meetings and combat training, this strategy had actually worked—the prince had stared at Merlin's wide, dull eyes and then immediately collapsed onto his bed, mumbling something about wanting to be put out of his misery, with the stipulation that incompetent servants should die first. Merlin had helpfully offered to smother Arthur with a pillow, for which he had received one to the face.

Arthur's aim had always been tragically good.

Tonight, however, the prince was having none of the Perhaps-I-Am-Mentally-Afflicted-and-Now-What-Will-You-Do act.

"Get up, Merlin," he instructed. At the last-ditch double-time blinking, he folded his arms. "Or I will get you up, possibly by stabbing you non-fatally."

"You have such inconsistent standards," Merlin said, scrambling to his feet and brushing the worst of the wrinkles out of his shirt. "One minute, you have to have me dead; the next, you'll settle for agonizing pain… sometimes I have trouble keeping up."

"Come on, Merlin," Arthur bid him, starting out of their camp. "Or I'll leave you here for the piast and collect the pieces in the morning."

Grudgingly, Merlin trailed. "Where are we going, then?"

"There should be a lake not far from here. I want a bath."

Arthur's baths would be the death of him, at least if Merlin had anything to say about it.

"You do realize," he said, clambering over a fallen log and pulling his sleeve out of the brambles he'd snagged it on, "that the water's going to be freezing."

Arthur snorted, batting a slender branch aside. Merlin did not think the fact that it whipped back and slapped him in the face was coincidence.

"I'm not as mollycoddled as you seem to think," the prince was saying in what was evidently a verbalized delusional episode. "I'd like to be, but you take such terrible care of me that it's become impossible."

"You're welcome," Merlin said.

The prince ignored him, intent instead on navigating through the tangle of trees. His estimate had been good, however—Merlin had only tripped and fallen on his face three times and snared himself in bushes twice by the time they broke out of the forest and reached the beach of a modest lake, which meant it hadn't been too far.

Arthur reverted to an akimbo stance again as he surveyed the scene, but there wasn't much time to admire the way the moonlight glinted on his hair before he was stripping off his clothing and letting it drop to the sand.

It was nothing Merlin hadn't seen before, of course—comfortable arrogance had turned the prince into something of an exhibitionist—and he'd grown accustomed to masking his appreciative glances, so it was the thought of shaking all that sand out of a petulant Arthur's clothes that made him cringe.

And then Arthur was wading unhesitatingly into the shallows, tiny waves lapping at his ankles, then his knees. His back had gone tight at the first contact with the icy waves, but he was attempting not to show his reaction, as that would have meant admitting Merlin was right. Naturally it had never crossed the prince's mind that someone could spend enough time watching him, enough time gauging him, and enough time caving to his every whim to read each muscle of his form. It was slightly exasperating but also rather satisfying to understand someone as important as Arthur so w—

"Come on, Merlin," Arthur said again.

The blinking wasn't a clever ploy this time; Merlin was honestly waiting for the image before his eyes to change. Arthur's broad back rose palely from the impregnable darkness of the lake, moonlight gleaming on his hair and silvering the ripples that spread around him, ebbing and widening as if his presence awed them, too. The prince was looking back over one shoulder, his hands half-lost in the water and half-above, a strip of it shining low on the small of his back, marking where the waves had dared to rise a little more.

"No, thanks," Merlin managed at least fifteen seconds later, the sounds grinding out of his throat when Arthur shifted his hips impatiently and a bubble of _something_ in Merlin's stomach popped.

"That wasn't an offer," Arthur said, turning to face him properly. "It was a request."

This was familiar ground. If Merlin could just anchor himself in the task of defying his master, he might not die on the spot and give Arthur his wish after all.

"Yeah, I got that," he said. "Thanks, but no thanks. Nice of you."

"Get in the water, Merlin."

"Isn't it cold? It looks cold. It looks frigid. I'm not nearly as manly and… cold-resistant… as you are, don't forget."

"You need to bathe more than I do."

"That's not true," Merlin protested. "I'm not dirty at all."

One of Arthur's eyebrows curved up, as did the right corner of his lips.

"Not yet," he said.

Merlin swallowed hard and tried to look somewhere—anywhere—else.

Then all of his body's nervous fidgeting stopped.

"Arthur," he said.

"I know some people find me a bit intimidating—"

"Arthur."

"—but it's never stopped you before."

"Arthur."

"You look dumbstruck. Or maybe just dumb."

"Arthur."

"Is that the only thing you can say?"

"Piast," Merlin said.

He pointed.

Arthur turned.

"Oh, for the love of all that is sacred," he said.

Rivulets coursed down the massive scales, green-black in the moonlight, slicked and glinting. Even partly-coiled, the piast towered over Arthur, its tapering head angled to watch him curiously, its yellow eyes luminescent in the dark. The gentle swaying of its neck was almost mesmerizing, and Merlin's hands tingled where they hung uselessly at his sides.

"Sword, Merlin," Arthur called, backing away so slowly that Merlin wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been watching very close indeed.

"You didn't bring it," he said, his whole chest too tight for his heart to sink. "You left it at the camp."

"Perfect," Arthur decided through clenched teeth. "Right, then. Bring me the biggest rock you can find, preferably before this thing devours my head."

Some completely lunatic part of Merlin wanted to say something about how Arthur's head was probably too fat for even a snake of that size to eat. He managed to contain it as he sidled towards a relatively sizable bush with a lot of thorns on it, thinking maybe he could rip off a club-like portion for Arthur to use.

"Perhaps we should just run, Sire," he suggested as he searched for a handhold that wouldn't skewer his palms.

"The crown prince of Camelot never—_holy hell, run for your life_!"

What followed was a not-so-merry chase over the course of which Merlin and a stark-naked Arthur raced about the beach, clambering around on the boulders that lined it in a series of increasingly manic attempts to evade the giant snake. Merlin did a lot of flailing his arms, and Arthur did a lot of shouting, and the piast dropped its jaw to display meter-long fangs in what looked suspiciously similar to a grin.

Merlin was starting to wonder how sentient this thing was.

He was also starting to wonder if they were about to die, but that was something he was accustomed to.

His legs were burning from all the climbing and running, and there were cuts on his hands from waving sticks and throwing rocks, and it was beginning to look like dying might be preferable. Panting heavily, he stopped at the top of the largest pile of boulders, in a pose that might have been dramatic if he hadn't been wheezing, and gazed helplessly at the attentive piast, so sinuous and graceful despite its size. Was it time to use magic? His alternatives were narrowing, and Arthur was still running around _without any clothes on_, hollering about projectiles and how they should aim for its eyes.

"Distract it, Merlin!" he ordered, a flash of pallor in the night as he scrambled down the rocks and started racing back for the trees. "And be careful!"

"You can't—" Merlin started, but the piast's eyes met his, and they were so intelligent that he paused.

He tilted his head, and it mimicked the motion. He took a step back, and the piast reared, withdrawing a little ways. Merlin hesitated, tensed to move, hesitated again, and then shuffled to the left. Once more the giant snake mirrored his movement, a forked tongue the size of a pennant flicking out to taste the air.

"You should leave," Merlin told it after a moment, and filmy eyelids sealed and unsealed as it blinked. "Arthur'll probably kill you."

The piast swung its neck back and forth a bit, as if it was trying to decide.

"Really," Merlin said. "He's got a lot of practice with the whole monster-slaying bit. He thinks you're a threat to Camelot."

The piast bobbed its head agitatedly, drawing closer, and the tip of its considerable tail appeared above the water and splashed. Merlin steeled himself against the urge to retreat.

"You could try the forest," he said. "You'd probably like it there. Lots of Wildren to eat, if you look in the caves. What do you think?"

The piast tossed its head, and he thought perhaps he'd offended it, but then it swam nearer, the lake frothing and churning as it moved, and leaned in very, very, very close.

Merlin gulped.

The piast's tongue flicked out, snapping by his ear, and he met its vast yellow eyes. Slowly and extremely cautiously, he raised his hand and patted its huge, triangular head.

"You'll be all right," he said, and his voice didn't even squeak too much.

The piast rubbed its overlapping scales against his palm a little, his fingers looking miniscule, and then it ducked away, dived into the lake, and swam off, undulating like a ribbon as it cut smoothly through the waves.

Merlin's knees gave out, and he sat down.

Moments later, Arthur crashed out of the trees, still as bare as the day he'd been born, his sword clenched in both hands.

"Merlin!" he called. "Get down from there; stay out of its—"

He skidded to a stop, sand spraying wildly, and stared.

"Where the hell did it go?"

"I think it was scared of you," Merlin said.

Arthur looked around a little more, as if the piast might be hiding its tremendous bulk behind a rock to play coy. Then he sighed and stabbed his sword into the sand, collapsing beside it and draping his arm over his eyes.

Uncertainly, and cautiously at first, Merlin picked his way back down to the beach and crept over to the recumbent prince.

"I don't think it'll come back," he offered.

The soles of Arthur's feet were bleeding, and there was sand stuck all over them.

"Do you want me to shake out your clothes?" he asked.

"No," Arthur said. "I want you to end my suffering."

Merlin considered him for a moment, then stumped over to the pile of the prince's clothing, beat the worst of the sand out of the tunic, and brought it back. He dropped it on Arthur's face.

"Come on," he urged. "Or I'll have to carry you."

Arthur got to his feet at that, gingerly but with an impressive amount of dignity.

"Your spindly little bones would snap," he said.

Convincing the still-completely-naked prince to rinse his feet in the lake, then dressing them, then helping him back to the camp and thence back to Camelot probably wouldn't be particularly fun, but all the same Merlin thought his luck was turning around.

"Don't be so harsh on yourself," he told Arthur. "You're not _that_ fat."

Arthur stared at him.

Merlin beamed.

Fortunately, the sand was relatively soft when Arthur tackled him to the ground and tickled him until he took it back.


End file.
